Researcher Spotlight

Spotlighting our Google Researchers: Tiffany Martin Deng

Tiffany Deng, chief of staff and program management lead for Google Research’s Responsible AI and Human Centered Technology organization, couldn’t do her job without her backpack. She actually doesn’t go anywhere without it, and uses it every single day on the job. To solve almost every challenge that she and her team face, she’s digging into it for solutions.

“I always talk about my career always being like a backpack–everywhere I go, I pick up different things because you never know when you’ll have to open it and take out some of those lessons and those tools to apply it to different problems,” Tiffany said.

And there’s been no shortage of interesting opportunities to fill that backpack for Tiffany. She’s been an intelligence officer in the United States Army, a consultant for the Pentagon and the State Department, as well as a privacy and algorithmic fairness specialist at Meta. 

As chief of staff for RAI-HCT, it’s on Tiffany and her fellow program managers to set up researchers for success. She’s tasked with ensuring the cutting-edge research and products coming out of Google Research properly incorporate the company’s AI Principles and adhere to responsibility standards. Depending on the project, that could mean anything from developing safeguards, ensuring privacy for users within the context of a product, or conducting adversarial testing.

No doubt that overseeing so many different projects and satisfying their needs is a complex job. Program managers have to provide researchers with the resources needed for their ideas while also ensuring a diversity of perspectives and voices can reach a consensus on how to carry out their projects–responsibly and effectively. To accomplish this, Tiffany will often look into her backpack for lessons learned on leadership to inspire members of her team and motivate them to bring their best to work.

“You need to be mission-oriented and organized–a servant leader that puts the needs of your people above your own to make sure that you're empowering them,” Tiffany shares. “You need to ensure that there’s clarity on what they're supposed to do.”

Tiffany’s role isn’t simply limited to dishing out orders, to be clear. A good program manager should be able to anticipate the needs of Researchers and predict obstacles before they pose major problems. Her multitude of professional experiences gives her the ability to think “100 steps ahead” in order to anticipate potential issues.

“Being 100 steps ahead means thinking about what's around the corner, thinking about new tools, new techniques, new feedback mechanisms,” Tiffany said. “And as it relates to responsibility, sometimes it’s creating new processes to think about how people might misuse the technology and then creating safeguards in order to mitigate that risk.”

Tiffany’s backpack and collected knowledge doesn’t just include professional experiences. She leans on her lived experiences as a person and uses them to look at tough problems through different lenses.

“I am a woman, I am a veteran. I am an African American. I’m a systems engineer by training. I’m a student of geopolitics and geography. There's a plurality of things that live inside of me, and I can use all of these skills and experiences to tackle complex, layered issues with others.”

The contents of her backpack keep accumulating at Google, and she’s been learning a ton from leaders and mentors in Google Research–like Maya Kulycky, a VP for Strategy and Operations in Google Research. One particular lesson from Maya that Tiffany especially appreciates is to remind yourself where you’ve come from, how far you’ve come, and how much knowledge you’ve accumulated along that path. Tiffany adds that “sometimes after being in the industry for so long, you forget that you know a few things. Maya’s constantly reminding me to lead with strength and to not be afraid of yourself or your power.”

Tiffany shares that working for VP of RAI-HCT Marian Croak–a living legend, in her words–has been one of her most unique experiences as a Googler. Tiffany attributes that to Marian’s ability to “connect with people and put them at ease, allowing them to be their authentic self. That's a quality that you don't always see in senior leaders.”

Another one of Tiffany’s identities is public servant–working on behalf of others has been a through line throughout Tiffany’s career, apparent due to her time in the military and other branches of the government. Even though she now works in the tech industry, Tiffany views her current work on ensuring responsible development of AI as a continuation of her public service, especially since “this idea of responsibility is for the people–they demand it, and we have to deliver on it.”

Tiffany receives a great deal of satisfaction knowing that she’s part of a mission that’s bigger than herself and working on projects that will ultimately help others. Working in Responsible AI, she’s well aware of the risk that AI can bring. However, she believes responsibly-built AI can lead to life-changing breakthroughs in medicine, education, and economic equality. Managing responsible AI projects affords her the opportunity to help pursue these goals and lay the safety-based groundwork for future technology that will end up in the hands of billions of users. 

“It is important for me to always be a part of an organization with a mission dedicated to helping people and doing good for others,” Tiffany said.